


you don't say a single word of your last two years

by thatsparrow



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Drinking & Talking, F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 10:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15117893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: "Are you busy with anything this evening?" Thor asks.She lifts the bottle pointedly, and he smiles again at that."Would you mind if I joined you?"





	you don't say a single word of your last two years

**Author's Note:**

> valkyrie nicknaming herself as "val" was something I first saw in [scioscribe's fics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/works?fandom_id=245368) (not sure if it's also general convention in other stories, but I figured I'd note where I got the idea from)
> 
> title from "he doesn't know why" by fleet foxes

"Looking for something?"

Val is in the process of emptying out one of the lower-level storage closets when she hears the question come from somewhere behind her, and even though she's more focused on searching for fucking something— _anything_ —with an alcoholic content, she doesn't need to look over her shoulder to know that it's Thor standing in the doorframe.

"Conducting a random mandatory search, actually," Val says, prying the lid off of a crate filled with stoppered blown-glass decanters that look promising, each one full of a mottled purple liquid and printed with a language she only half-recognizes — Krylorian, maybe? "You know, for your safety."

"Oh?"

"Mhm." She uses her knife to crack the red-wax seal around the lip of one of the bottles, levering off the cap and sending it clattering to the floor before taking a deep inhale of the fumes and tasting alcohol in her nose — like a meditative breath, if getting shitfaced was the intent of meditation. Uncapped bottle in hand and knife tucked back into her belt, Val turns to look at Thor. He's leaning against the jamb, arms folded across his chest and brow furrowed behind the black scar of his eyepatch, staring at her with equal parts curiosity and amusement.

"Are you saying I'm in danger?"

Val takes a long pull from the glass, feeling the needle-sharp sting of the drink in her throat and tasting copper under the burn of the alcohol. Like bottom-shelf whiskey poured over freshly-spilled blood, aged in the sun instead of a cellar. It's not the worst thing Val's ever tasted.

"False alarm," she says, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and taking a few steps towards the door of the closet, her fingers closed around the neck of the bottle.

"A moment, if you don't mind," Thor says, stepping aside enough that she has room to walk past him, but still lingering half in the frame.

"Something you needed, Your Majesty?" She asks, looking up at him and taking another deep drink from the bottle. "Were you looking for me, or for the case of Sakaaran sex toys the Grandmaster kept stored on the back shelf?" Val grins up at him, rewarded by the slight laugh that Thor lets out in surprise. It occurs to her that she hasn't seen him smile much since they first met—not that Sakaar offered much in the way of humor, not that the destruction of Asgard served as a cause for levity—and she thinks it's a shame that it's been such a rare sight. His face is more suited to laughter than battle scars, and she wonders what he must have been like as a young prince. Baby faced and bright eyed. Hands soft, save for the calluses earned in Asgard's training court — his skin still unmarred by missteps, and his skills untested in battle.

She prefers her world-weary version of the king, all things considered.

Thor looks down at her, seeming amused but not giving away much else in his expression. He should remind her of Odin now, both of them one-eyed kings of Asgard—scarred on the same side, too, and was that deliberate on Hela's part?—but she doesn't see anything of Odin-the-conqueror in the lines of Thor's face. A familial resemblance, maybe, but where Odin used to walk off the battlefield with his beard stained by blood and black-cancer Hela at his side, here's Thor captaining a ship of refugees and rejecting Asgard's legacy of conquest, and even if Val barely knew Frigga she assumes that Thor must be his mother's son.

She trusts him more than Odin to guide Asgard's uncertain future, and—though she'd never tell him—she's not convinced that his father's death was the worst thing.  

"As it happens," Thor says, interrupting her thoughts, "I was looking for you."

Val raises her eyebrows. "Sounds ominous. What do you need?"

"Are you, ah, busy with anything this evening?" He asks, clearing his throat somewhat.

She lifts the bottle pointedly, and he smiles again at that.

"Would you mind if I joined you?"

"What, seriously?"

He nods, and Val tilts her head, considering.

"Yeah, alright," she says after a beat. "Fuck it." She shoves the bottle she's holding into Thor's hand and goes back to pick up the rest of the crate. "But your quarters are nicer than mine, so we're going there."

 

—

 

"Oh, bull _shit_."

"It's true."

They're back in Thor's room, sitting on opposite sides of a corner table and trading their second (and, by now, half-empty) bottle of Krylorian liquor back and forth across the surface. ("Hm. No, I think these letters might be Pluvian." "Those languages look exactly _nothing_ alike." "Yes, well, that's why I'm right and you're incorrect.") Val's slumped back into a chair, feet propped up on one of the empty seats, grinning lazily and feeling a familiar and pleasant dizziness somewhere in the back of her skull.

"You? Banished? What — did Odin get pissy when you broke curfew?"

Thor shakes his head. "No, I, uh—" he laughs and reaches for the bottle, "—I single-handedly broke his centuries-old truce with the Jotuns and restarted a war." He pauses, his smile fading as he stops the glass short of his mouth. "Maybe Hela and I were more alike than I thought."

Val rolls her eyes, nudging his leg with her foot. "All due respect, Your Majesty, but between you and your brother, you're not the one I'd say bears a closer resemblance to sister dearest."

Thor shrugs, setting the bottle back on the table and turning over the cap in his hands. It clinks and rattles against the metal surface, and Val is reminded of the sounds of combat she used to hear from her ship over the Grandmaster's arena, distant and tinny. Like echoes of a battle being fought miles away, and the contestants beneath her as small and unreal as toy dolls. Until Thor, she supposes.

"You'd left by then, but my father gave me Mjolnir to wield as well. Told me it had been forged for his firstborn from the heart of a dying star." He stares down at the table with a humorless smile. "Which, I suppose, technically wasn't a lie. Always so careful with his words, my father."

"If you're preparing to spend the rest of the night in self-pity," Val says, reaching out for the bottle, "then I'd rather finish this off alone. I don't drink to weep over the past, Your Majesty, but to forget it."

She makes to stand, but Thor catches her wrist, his thumb resting against the shadow of her Valkyrior tattoo.

"Wait, please," he says, and Val stares at him carefully, eyebrows raised. "Point taken. I'll let Hela's bones and those of my father rest where they fell." He seems genuine enough, so Val tilts her head in acknowledgement, slowly lowering herself back to her seat.

"Anyway," Thor says, clearing his throat, "after my ill-advised attempt on Jotunheim—and, I should note, a timely intervention by Heimdall and my father—he stripped me of my powers and banished me to Midgard."

"Is that when you met Banner?”

Thor shakes his head. "No — no, that was later, when Loki launched an assault on a Midgard city."

Val raises her eyebrows pointedly. "I'm sorry?"

"He staged a few attempted coups on Asgard as well," he says, waving a hand dismissively. "It was a phase. His version of teenage rebellion."

She blinks at him, taking a slow drink.

"I'm—" Thor pauses, considering for a moment, "— _almost_ entirely certain he has no plans to overthrow me and seize the throne. High ninety percent. Low nineties, at the very least."

"Reassuring."

"Loki's attracted to power, not to ruling," he says, matter-of-fact. "He's interested in building great, golden statues of himself and commissioning plays that flatter his legacy, not in advising everyday complaints or managing council meetings or the minutiae of rebuilding a nation."

"I'd believe that," Val says, thinking back to the Loki she'd known on Sakaar. Content to let the Grandmaster foot the bill for new leathers and fine food and to take up a place of admiration in the Sakaaran court in exchange for the Grandmaster putting him down on his knees. Actions taken in equal pursuit of self-preservation and adoration. Even before Thor's talk of attempted coups, she'd figured Loki as the sort to bide his time before making a bid for the Grandmaster's seat of power.

Loki would have lost.

"So what was life like on Midgard?" Val asks, sliding the bottle towards Thor.

"I thought you didn't drink to talk about the past?"

"I don't drink to _weep_ over the past," she says, "but I enjoy a good story as much as the next. My asking that you finish your anecdote isn't the same as you discovering your issues with your father at the bottom of the glass."

Thor laughs. "No, I suppose not." He pauses, looking thoughtful, and Val wonders what memory—or, she supposes, the memory of what individual—is giving him cause for hesitation.

"It was humbling," he says at last, "and necessary, I think, for all that I resented my father's decision at the time. Before Midgard, I was reckless, and arrogant, and overly sure of myself." He shares a smile with Val. "Exactly the sort of man who'd think himself capable of conquering Jotunheim with a handful of unwillingly-enlisted friends, and little experience on a proper battlefield. I resented my father for treating me like a child—exiling me to Midgard like sending me to my room without supper—but I was. Childish, that is — and Midgard burned most of that away. I was a different man after I came back, and I think a better one. A worthy one."

"Well," Val says, her fingertip tracing a circle on the table and voice mock-serious, "while I can't speak for who you once were, I suppose you turned out alright."

Thor inclines his head in her direction, smiling, and Val hides her own grin behind the mouth of the bottle.

 

—

 

"So what's really going on?"

"Hm?"

By now, they've left behind the table for the couch on the other end of the room, Thor slumped back into the cushions, eyes half-closed. Val has her feet propped up in his lap, cradling their third bottle of Krylorian booze in her hands.

"You. _This_. Were you having an unusually shitty day, or has it just been that long since your last hangover?"

"Perhaps I just missed your company."

"We see each other every day," Val says, rolling her eyes for all that her voice is fond.

"Yes," Thor says, looking over at her, something sobering in his expression, "but not like this."

She knows he's tipsy—tipsier than she is, and she'll make a point to tease him about that in the morning—so she feels guilty staring at the unguarded look on his face. He's staring at her like he'd be content to do nothing else for the rest of the evening—like words are too fragile for the weight of what he wants to convey—and Val feels as if she's scraped away the wrapping on a present that hadn't been gifted yet, stealing a piece of information she wasn't meant to know. It's a look that feels like the start to a different conversation, and one that Val's not sure she's ready to have just yet, so she blinks a few times and glances down, breaking the moment as easy as snapping a matchstick between her fingers.

"Even so," Val says after a beat, clearing her throat, "this is a shitload of liquor for something as simple as a social call."

"You worried about how much I'm drinking?" Thor asks, and Val thinks she catches the whisper of judgment under his innocent-sounding tone.

"Oh, is _that_ what this is about?" Her voice sharpens at the edges, whittled into something pointed enough to sting (though still too blunt to draw blood). "I told you I had no plans to quit after Sakaar, and fucking forgive me if that hasn't changed."

"No, I—" Thor breaks off, rubbing a hand across the tired lines of his face. "I'm sorry. That wasn't what I meant. I didn't come here to tell you to quit alcohol—" he looks at her with a wry smile, "—and even if I did, I don't think that my asking after however-many drinks would really have been the best approach."

"Arguably not, no."

"And Allfather knows that _I've_ taken too heavily to drink in my own past. But—"

 _But what?_ Val thinks, watching Thor closely in his silence, pausing as he tries to figure the shape of his next words. _But you and I are different? But a couple late evenings at a collection of Asgardian alehouses isn't the same as millennia spent with a bottle in hand?_

"—you say that you drink to forget the past," he says after a moment, "and I would that there was something I could do to ease that burden. That you no longer felt the need to blur whatever happened by searching for the bottom of a glass."

Oh.

"You're asking about Hela, then," Val says after a while, taking another pull and tasting the liquid like mud on her tongue.

"If Hela is where the story begins, then, yes, I suppose I am." He looks at her carefully. "But I don't mean to push you into discussing something you'd prefer unspoken. Some wounds are too fresh, and I'm not asking you to re-open the skin for the sake of my satisfaction. I just mean to offer myself as someone willing to listen, if that ever proves something you should need."

Val nods slowly. "Alright, Your Majesty. I'll keep that in mind."

It's silent for a moment, and then Thor starts to tell her about when he and Loki were fourteen and stole an Asgardian ship on a lark, nearly sailing it over the edge of the falls before Heimdall noticed and alerted their father. He laughs as he talks, and Val finds it difficult not to smile as well, their earlier conversation not forgotten, but perhaps set aside for the rest of the evening. A thought for Val to turn over on rainy days (or, rather, the next time they sail through a storm of solar flares).

She's not promising herself that she'll take him up on his offer, but she does promise herself to think over it, and even that small step feels like some measure of progress. That she can consider the idea of opening up about Hela and the Valkyrior—finding solace in words instead of whiskey—and the thought doesn't send her running the way it once would have. It feels like a step she's capable of, and never mind that it's one counted in centimeters instead of feet and inches.

She leaves the bottle untouched for the rest of the night.


End file.
